Abstract
In this book, Ilana Feldman is concerned with documenting the nature of policing and security practices by Egyptian authorities in Gaza from the early 1950s until 1967. The methods used by Egyptian police to maintain security and order in Gaza during this time are similar to the way colonial policing acts in general. As Michael Banton and others have argued, colonial-based policing is more concerned with the maintenance of order during periods of perceived crisis, while the more familiar “professional” model of policing—which was launched in earnest with the establishment by Robert Peel of the Metropolitan Police Force in London in 1829—is primarily geared toward the prevention and detection of crime. Hence, colonial-based policing may be described generally as “order police,” whereas traditional policing is best understood as a sort of “law police.” This is consistent with Althusser’s view that colonial policing relies less on consent and more on coercion, being part of a more extensive “repressive state apparatus” (p. 11).
Yet, interestingly enough, as Foucault and others have noted, with the march of enlightenment reasoning, there has also been a systematic retreat from cruel and barbaric physical punishments in favor of the creation of docile and manageable citizenries through constant surveillance. This “softer” form of governance can operate even within a colonial-based policing system, whereby police implicate themselves in more activities of the citizenry beyond simply criminal activities. This fanning out of disciplinary mechanisms sends police into more and more intimate areas of citizens’ lives, and at some point, those being surveilled may acquiesce to the intrusiveness of the ruling system to the extent that there is a promise that order will be maintained.
Feldman used a variety of sources to document the ways in which Palestinian citizens dealt with security surveillance being carried out by Egyptian constabulary forces, including interviews with retired police officers, memoirs of those living in Gaza at the time, press accounts, and archival sources. Her main analytical construct that allowed the classification of numerous police-involved incidents in Gaza during the period in question was the so-called police encounter. These police encounters encompass all the events which transpired and were recorded under official police business, and they ranged from the dramatic (such as actual criminal activities carried out in Gaza) to the mundane, such as described at the beginning of the book where a lengthy police report was developed over a Palestinian doctor’s getting drunk at a dinner party.
The five chapters of the book following the introduction provide a narrative of the everyday life of Palestinians in the face of expansive security surveillance by Egyptian police in Gaza. The theme of Chapter 1 is the high levels of suspicion which were deployed by security forces and which became a palpable reality in the living conditions of citizens in Gaza. Although police officers were specially trained to detect and deal with such categories of persons as criminals, traitors, and dissidents, they also created a more pervasive and denser set of suspicion, as citizens themselves were encouraged to inform authorities about any activities that seemed out of the ordinary. This suspicion formed a backdrop for everyday life in Gaza and became intensified in the project of border control, as Egyptian administrators were especially concerned that border crossers not provoke an Israeli response or violate armistice conditions.
Chapter 2 carries on the discussion of the variety of ways surveillance and informing were utilized by police officials. Although some of the official reports arising from the multitudes of police encounters provided critical information about criminal (low policing) or political (high policing) activities, many others produced “reports of nothing” (p. 51). In this context, the policing of merely socially improper behavior is cut from the same cloth as the more serious criminal or political activities. How far self-policing went within the prevailing culture of suspicion and uncertainty was illustrated in the 1960 case of Gazan schoolchildren who reported to police authorities that one of their classmates possessed a book that appeared to justify the 1956 Israeli attack on Egypt (p. 53).
The last three chapters dealt, respectively, with criminal interdiction and the role of reputation (i.e., how easily it could be secured or ruined), the management of political protest, and peacekeeping and the international community. After 1957, Egyptian security forces were augmented by a new peacekeeping force, the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). The addition of UNEF to the region highlighted the continuing concerns—now reaching the global level—of security matters in Gaza. Feldman does a nice job here of teasing out how citizens of Gaza shifted the focus of their claims and complaints with the addition of the international force. Whereas before whenever Gazans made claims of oppression or improprieties at the hands of Egyptian administrators, they did so as Palestinian citizens and as Arabs. But in the case of perceived or real mistreatment by UNEF forces, Gazans were more apt to use the language of “human” violations (p. 121). Responding to the prospects of higher level charges of human rights violations, UNEF forces acted more in line with what is currently understood as community policing, emphasizing reassurance policing and seeking to create meaningful collaboration between themselves and the citizens of Gaza. Of course, such work of reassurance and amelioration is always precarious within the context of police operating as an occupying force where the logic of order policing predominates over the “professional” model of law policing.
All in all, Feldman has produced a highly engaging and informative account of the precariousness of any project of colonial policing or its more modern offshoots. Besides being of interest to criminal justice scholars in general, the book could be especially useful as a supplemental text in policing and social control classes.